Comments on draft-barber-nntp-imp-05.txt

[kherron at campus.mci.net]

Comment #1:
RFC 977 says of the ``list command'':

	3.6.1. LIST
	
	      LIST 
	
	      Returns a list of valid newsgroups and associated
	      information.  Each newsgroup is sent as a line of text in
	      the following format:
	
	      group last first p 
	
	      where <group> is the name of the newsgroup, <last> is the
	      number of the last known article currently in that
	      newsgroup, <first> is the number of the first article
	      currently in the newsgroup, and <p> is either 'y' or 'n'
	      indicating whether posting to this newsgroup is allowed
	      ('y') or prohibited ('n').

No implementation I've ever seen has properly implemented the restriction
on the 4th field.  Both INN and the reference implementation just send 
whatever is in the active file's 4th field.

Comment #2:
RFC 977 says of the post command:
	3.10.1. POST
	
	      POST 
	[...]
	If posting is permitted, the article should be presented in the
	format specified by RFC850, and should include all required
	header lines. After the article's header and body have been
	completely sent by the client to the server, a further response
	code will be returned to indicate success or failure of the
	posting attempt.
	[...]

Note that it specifies that the submitted article ``should include all
required header lines.''  In fact, modern implementations only require
From:, Subject:, and Newsgroups: and will happily make up the rest; further,
modern wisdom is for clients to generate as few headers as possible, since
they often do a poor job of it.